associated with deep sea volcanism has been, so far, equivocal. Here, we construct a regional, glacial-deglacial 14 carbon budget of the volcanically active Gulf of California using microfossil C measurements and find results consistent with an increased addition of geologic carbon related to local seafloor volcanism during the deglaciation. Our estimates point to enhanced geologic carbon flux both before and during the last deglaciation that generally occur alongside carbonate preservation. This leads us to suggest that the carbon was added in the 14 form of partially neutralized, C-free bicarbonate associated with known Gulf sedimentary processes- a carbon source that would have a minimal effect on atmospheric CO . 2 Plain Language Summary: We account for the carbon entering and leaving the waters of the Gulf of California since the last ice age. Our results argue for increased supply of geologic carbon alongside enhanced volcanic activity after the last ice age. We argue that this delivery of geologic carbon to Gulf seawater was in the form of bicarbonate, not CO , which would have a minimal impact on seawater acidity and is consistent with global 2 sedimentary records.

Rahi, P., Vaishampayan, P., 2020. Editorial: MALDI-TOF MS application in microbial ecology studies. Frontiers in Microbiology 10, 2954. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2019. 02954.

https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2019.02954 Recent advancements in high-throughput sequencing, proteomics, metabolomics, and bioinformatics have revolutionized the microbial ecology research and immensely improved our understanding of the microbiome. Metagenomics and other cultivation-independent studies have shown that a diverse population of hundreds of millions of microorganisms habitat various ecosystems of the earth. The majority of these isolates have not yet been cultivated, and their metabolic functions remain unknown. Cultivation of microorganisms holds several essential advantages, which includes the prospection of isolated culture for their potential biotechnological applications. Though it is impossible to cultivate all the microbial community members, cultivation of majority of gut bacterial community members, including several novel taxa has been achieved by using multiple culture conditions approach (Lagier et al., 2016). Such studies involve simulation of culture conditions by mimicking the natural environment and high- throughput cultivation of microorganisms, leading to the development of a new approach known as 'Culturomics' (Lagier et al., 2012). A rapid and reliable me thod for the identification of microorganisms from various ecosystems is critically required to meet the requirements of culturomics. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS), based identification of micro organisms, appears the most suitable technique for this role. The ability to generate 'portable' data to develop databases holds the key to its successful application in microbial ecology studies. In addition to high- throughput identification, MALDI-TOF MS has also been used for the analysis of microbial function or metabolism at the single organism and/or whole community level by the profiling of various biomolecules like proteins, sugar, and lipids (Clark et al., 2018; Weigt et al., 2018). The articles published under this Research Topic reported application of MALDI-TOF MS for the accurate and fast identification of microorganisms isolated from diverse environments including nosocomial settings (Florio et al.), biofilm habitats (Tuohy et al.), spacecraft and associated surfaces (Seuylemezian et al.), and cellular phones (Kurli et al.). In addition to this, a minireview highlighted the advantages and challenges associated with MALDI-TOF MS based microbial diagnosis and identification (Florio et al.), and an opinion article pointed to toward the collaborative efforts toward curated database especially for fungal community ecology (Lima et al.). In this editorial, we did a critical analysis of each article published under the Research Topic, and propose various solutions to improve the application of MALDI-TOF MS in microbial ecology studies. Recent Advances in MALDI-TOF MS in Microbial Identification MALDI-TOF MS is widely used in routine identification of microbial pathogens and has influenced clinical diagnostics and is replacing existing identification methods, including both biochemical and 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The rapid identification of microorganisms causing nosocomial infections, in addition to the knowledge of the antibiotic resistance patterns is highly advantageous especially in terms of morbidity, mortality, and health costs savings (Florio et al.). New perspectives are being explored for MALDI-TOF MS in